[Dixielandjazz] FW: [IDesigns.News] Email Rejected by AOL

[James Kashishian]

The subject of mail being bounced from AOL due to it "looking like" spam
is covered very well by my web people in the following letter.  Since
some of us on DJML have suffered from this, I'm posting it here.  Those
of you on AOL should be aware that a good deal of spam is being
stopped....PLUS a good deal of decent mail.

 Seems that now two of my addresses (ran.es & kashprod.com) are blocked
by AOL.  Hmmmmmm!  Wonder when they'll blacklist my hotmail address?

Read on, if you're interested.  Jim



-----Original Message-----
From: support at idesigns.net [mailto:support at idesigns.net] 
Sent: miércoles, 17 de septiembre de 2003 20:02
To: support at idesigns.net
Subject: [IDesigns.News] Email Rejected by AOL

Subject: Email Rejected by AOL
Date: 09/17/03

To All IDesigns Clients,

In this newsletter:

** Email Rejected by AOL


Email Rejected by AOL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In recent weeks some clients have been experiencing problems sending
mail to AOL. This problem has been an intermittent one which has made it
difficult to troubleshoot, though through communications with the AOL
staff and a little detective work we believe that we have discovered the
cause for this problem. Unfortunately, the problem is with AOL's
automated spam detection system and cannot be corrected by IDesigns.net
personnel.

PLEASE CONTINUE READING

Once you have read through the problem, cause and solution please be
sure to pass this information on to all of your email users, especially
those who may forward email to their AOL accounts:

The problem starting point is when one of our customers has a Mail
Manager entry that is set to forward mail to an AOL email address. When
that user receives spam at the AOL address which was forwarded from
their domain email, and then reports it to AOL, their system (AOL)
incorrectly identifies the source of the spam as the server that is
hosting the user's domain. Here is a flow chart that better explains it:

(1) Mail is sent from spammer to your domain email account.
(2) Spam arrives at your domain email account and gets forwarded to AOL
per your Mail Manager settings
(3) Spam message then arrives at your AOL account, where you click the
"report spam" button.
Without knowing it, you have just reported yourself for spamming!

The actual sender should be held accountable for the spam, but due to
the way AOL has modified their automated systems this is not what is
happening. AOL's software is only looking at the last "received by"
header - which is closest to the top of the email headers. It "should"
be looking at the first "received by" information from near the bottom
of the mail headers where the originator information is.

So, the end result is a complaint which is recorded against the server
you are hosted on, not the spammer. After a few of these are received,
the AOL system places the server on a blacklist - and no one from that
server can send mail to AOL from that point until the block is lifted.
Of course, the cycle repeats as soon as the "report spam" button is
clicked in the AOL interface on a message that was forwarded to AOL per
your Mail Manager settings.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO

We are continuing communications with AOL but have been provided with a
timeframe as to when a permanent fix or resolution to the problem will
be at hand. However, there are a few easy things you can do to help:

* Do not use the "Report Spam" button in your AOL mail if the message
was forwarded from your domain
* Do not forward mail to AOL at all - use the Mail Manager to set up POP
mailboxes which can be checked with WebMail or any mail client (such as
Outlook Express, Eudora, etc).
* Write or call AOL support and request that they not block any mail
from the IDesigns.net servers.

These may not be practical long-term solutions, however they will help
cut down the number of mistaken spam reports that jeopardize our
client's ability to send mail to AOL.

WHAT WE ARE DOING

We still have an open ticket with the postmaster staff at AOL and are in
communication with them frequently, reviewing the spam that has been
reported to determine if they are legitimate complaints or not. Most of
them have not, they have been false reports as described above.

We do appreciate your patience while we work on getting AOL to correct
the problem with their systems. Even though this is not a problem due to
our servers configurations nor is it specific to us, we realize that
email is an important communications tool and are trying to get this
resolved for the benefit of all users.

Thank you for your cooperation!

Feedback, comments, and suggestions are welcomed and may be sent to:
client.feedback at idesigns.net

http://www.idesigns.net
Phone: 1-860-767-3473
General Information: info at idesigns.net
Technical Support: support at idesigns.net
Billing Inquiries: billing at idesigns.net
Client Feedback: client.feedback at idesigns.net